Lawmaker Talmadge Branch has been in office since 1995, representing the 45th legislative district. In 2013, he supported major gun control measures that included banning assault weapons, requiring people who buy handguns to provide their fingerprints and limiting gun magazines to 10 bullets. At the time he was quoted as saying the following (via Fox News):

“Delegate Talmadge Branch, D-Baltimore, told lawmakers how Baltimore legislators regularly attend funerals of people who are gunned down. He described a calendar that sometimes included two funerals a week or two a month.

“We don’t have a need for an assault rifle in the city of Baltimore,” Branch said. “We don’t have that kind of need, and we don’t need guns on the street that are unlicensed, and we don’t need guns on the street that are actually killing people.”

With all due respect sir, the guns aren’t actually killing people. It’s the people holding the guns who are killing people.

Now the gun violence has hit home especially close for this lawmaker. Sadly, murders will continue until lawmakers address the root cause of people killing people in that city.

There should be an automatic minimum 10-15 year sentence, with no possible chance of parole, for anyone committing a crime with any kind of gun. The sentence should automatically double if the gun was either; stolen, a felon had passion of the gun, or the gun was not registered to the person committing the crime.

These minimum sentences for gun violations would be added to any other charges against a criminal that a trial may find them guilty of.

My sympathies for Mr. Branch, but if there is one thing true about liberalism and leftism, it is that those affected cannot learn from experience.
Ideology is a matter of political expedience and not about truth. Branch ought to know that it is the heart of man—or evil men—that is the problem, and not the tools of killing, per se.
But I imagine Branch’s career and pension matter more to him than truth.
There are no political solutions to spiritual problems.